When is A Rep Event not a Rep Event
Rep events are a big part of the Strongman puzzle, but its all about context.
Hopefully this article will help to clear up some of the training pitfalls and problems of preparing for rep events in competition.
Context
As strength athletes you can probably throw away training with less than 20% of your maximal force as a training modality, atleast in terms of its overall importance for competition.
And if you’re a Weightlifter, or Powerlifter it goes without saying… train to increase your 1RM.
Its the same case for strongmen most of the time too.
However, where it gets interesting is that intersection at 80%, in-particular in terms of rep events in strongman.
Theory
The picture is an excerpt straight out of Zatsiorsky, one of my favourite books on strength training. I’ll save you having to read through it and put the bit I found interesting below.
If force required is higher than 80% - Train maximal strength and not endurance.
If force required is less than 20% - Train endurance and not maximal strength.
If force required is between 20% and 80% - Train Both
With that in mind it kind of goes without saying, if you’ve got a rep event coming that is 90 to 95% of your 1rm, then its probably useless and a bit futile just trying to add reps, you’ll just get more milage (and more reps) out of just focusing on getting stronger.
But how many of you have approached training for a rep event where the weight is above 80% of your 1rm as a rep event?
Did you run out of steam?
Did you struggle to add a significant number of reps to your predicted rep max on the weight?
Like wise, how many of you have looked at a rep event thats sub 80% of your max and thought, ‘awh thats pretty light, i’m just going to focus on getting stronger.’
And how many of you underperformed with that approach?
In Practice
To get the most out of an event you need to train it correctly and to do that you need to understand where the cut off points are in terms of training for for different kinds of strength. In most case’s in strongman, maximal strength and strength endurance.
I’ve been guilty of it in the past myself, training a timed event for strength endurance when I should have been training it for maximum strength. I’ve also gone the other way where I’ve trained movements for maximum strength when I should have focussed on the reps.
Most of the time its common sense, however its the grey area around 80% where people usually fall down. That grey area at 80% is also where you’ll usually find the rep events in well planned competitions.
Takeaway
Long term, more maximal strength should almost always be the goal in strongman, but short term the event should be trained for what it is to you, not what it is on paper…
Its important to understand the theoretical cutoff points of different types of strength and how to put it within the context of your own training and strength levels combined with the variables of the event in question.
In the case of Strongmen and timed events for reps:
Sub 80% of your 1rm = Look to add reps with a strength endurance focus
Plus 80% of your 1RM = Look to add to your 1RM with a maximal strength focus.
Just because somethings disguised as a rep event, doesn’t necessarily mean it should be treat as such if your personal strength levels and circumstance dictate otherwise.
For me, its probably one of the main reasons you see some strongmen come into competition and underperform against guys they really should be beating.
Bonus Trivia
This is hypothetical and will probably never happen, but if you took an athlete with a max of 150kg in the squat, and another athlete with a 300kg max in the squat, and asked them to rep out a 20kg bar to failure you would presume the athlete with the 300kg max would win.
Well you’d be wrong!.. Possibly.
While the athlete with the 300kg max may well win, once you drop past 20% of a 1RM, Maximal strength doesn’t even come into the equation and instead pure endurance is the key factor.
While its an extreme example, its a good indicator of why its important to know the theoretical cutoffs and why it could be possible for someone like Crossfit Athlete Brooke Wells to out squat Ray Williams for reps on an empty bar.
Adam Johnston, 25th May 2020
